Thursdays @ Albion Hotel Parramatta, SydneyAssessment Time: 11:45PM – 12:45PM Address: 135 George St, Parramatta Venue Website:http://www.albionhotel.com.au Promoter Website: Self Promoted Occurrence: Every Thursday Outside Line: Very short outside, did not take long to get in. You could also freely enter via the beer garden entrance tonight. Normal weekend nights you would only be allowed initial entry via the outside carpark entrance. Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual is ok tonight. Tonight was a mix of casual and smart casual.. a lot of the guys just came up with their casual shirts and girls wearing casual one pieces. Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free all night. Guestlist: None Inside: Enter via the carpark into the ‘gasworks’ nightclub room, a square-ish floor to hold 200-300 people. Stage area where bands would play during other events is converted to a dance area as well with the installation of 2 dancing poles. DJ area is up in the middle here as well. Bar on the opposite side of the room. Head outside to the beer garden about twice the size of the nightclub area, with an extra bar outside and inside the gambling area. Cloak Room: None Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink tonight. The line wasn’t that long. A probable 4-8 minute wait. DJs: (From the website) DJ Tiklez, Anthum, G-Wizard, Tommy Funk Music Style: Everything is covered here. Modern and retro pop, contemporary rnb, with some house tracks as well. Mostly tunes people could dance to. On the website it is listed as RnB, 80’s Funk, NRG. Crowd & Ratio: Mostly local people from around the area – Dominantly Anglo-Saxon, mostly from a European background with the rest being Aussie. There are also Middle Eastern and Indians here. Hard pressed to find an Asian here. It was also a noticeably large proportion of men to women. About 7 to 1 on initial count. A guy told us how shit he thought tonight was. I looked around, and there were people everywhere. It was just the dominance of guys that we was probably referring to. Ages varied from teenagers to people in their 30’s. Entertainment: No extras. Atmosphere: Pretty dark inside here, so it does feel more of a nightclub, especially at the front. Near the back it feels more like a bar as people aren’t dancing so much up the back. Most groups of people kept to themselves here. There was this one drunk kiwi or samoan looking guy dancing, and yelling with everyone. You can tell he is drunk as he has a beer in his hand. Video: 2x 360 views. One from the back and one from the front

Assessment Time: 8pm-MidnightWebsite: http://www.albionhotel.com.au/Address: 135 George St, ParramattaDress Code: Casual ok. Most guys wore t-shirts, and girls wore dresses.Entry Fee / Cover Charge: FreeGuestlist: n/aInside: Courtyard was open only tonight. Small narrow dancefloor on the side to hold about 100 people.Cloak Room: N/aBar: One barDJ: DJ Jorgie Jay, DJ Fresh & DJ Adrian AllanMusic: House, RnB, PopCrowd: Dominantly European and Middle Eastern. Some Aussies and no Asians except for us. Lots of men with tight t-shirts on showing off their muscles. It’s gross.Entertainment: n/aAtmosphere: Dead early, but just like any normal nightclub, people did not dance until around 10:30, but after that it got pretty packed in the small dance area. In the courtyard it was bustling, with most tables occupied. It was a good atmosphere later in the night.

We were here for birthday drinks – it just happens that from 9pm the DJ would start playing some RNB tunes to dance to! Luckily I don’t have work on Friday… so let’s check it out!

Assessment Time: 9pm – 12:30amAddress: 135 George St, ParramattaDress Code: Casual OK. I was wearing my business attire – collared black shirt, blazer, black pants and shoes.Cover Charge / Entry Fee: Free for the whole night. No guestlist necessaryInside: Gasworks Nightclub takes up about a third of the area of Albion Hotel. It is basically one big room with lounges against one wall, some tables/chairs on the other side, DJ at the front along with a massive podium (enough space to hold a band), and bar at the back.DJs: DJ Fresh doing the whole set tonight.Music: RNB and house. The DJ was very good tonight, mixing RNB songs and house songs. Busted the DJ playing the same house song twice. Once early on around 9.30, and once again at around midnight. no sound difficulties. It was at the right volume and not too loud.Crowd: Caucasian/Euro. A few groups of girls, and not many guys. Interesting.Atmosphere: Dead initially. C and I had a bit of a dance initially, and there was another couple dancing ballroom style. In total that’s 4 people on the floor, with about 15 people looking on from the sidelines. About 2 hours later it picked up, and there were about 30 people on the floor at the peak. The place could probably accomodate 100 people easily. A surprising turn out for a Thursday night as I expected it to be totally dead. The general atmosphere was pretty fun, mainly because the guy/girl ratio was even steven.

Blacktown RSL – We were at the station. 30 minutes until the next train. So we went to Blacktown RSL to dance. There was a band playing tribute songs and we danced for 5 minutes before we had to leave. The crowd was 30s and older.

Me and the band - Blacktown RSL (we were here for 4 minutes)

Albion Hotel, Parramatta
Me and C outside of Albion Hotel. It’s currently the best place to be in Parramatta on Saturday nights. Good euro crowd, and music is mixing between RNB and House. We ask some other punters who just left – they said it was packed and pretty good. Cover charge is $15. C hears the house music inside and doesn’t want to go in. So we leave. We ask a local and she says there isn’t much else. So we try to get back in but the bouncer says its a 1am lockout. The time was 1.01am.

Collectors Hotel, Parramatta
The music was ok, but the venue looked small. Didn’t look like a nightclub. The line was long, and full of Islanders. Not my or C’s kinda crowd. We left

Roxy hotel, Parramatta
Closed! What on earth? We had wondered why there were no Saturday night pictures on the Roxy website.

So we left Parramatta at 1.30am to go home.

Coda / Recommendation
Saturday night Parramatta area recommendation is Albion Hotel. There isn’t much else out west, except The Mean Fiddler. Also get to these places a bit earlier. 1am lockouts suck.